Posts tagged ‘cs lewis’

Pleasures are to last forever in some form or another. According to Lewis, a pleasure is full grown only when it is remembered.[1]This full knowledge and complete fruition of pleasure will only be in the fulfillment of one’s telos. This lapse in knowledge, the separation between the subject and object (the epistemic gap between the subject and the object of desire that full one’s pleasures) is removed in heaven. In Narnia, TheLast Battle is the battle of the real forms—a draw to a close between this epistemic gap. Digory, looking at the new Narnia, seeing that it is a fuller, more real version of the old Narnia, comments that, “It’s all in Plato, all in Plato.”[2] Lewis’ Platonism is one in which ideas becomes concrete forms. In heaven, Lewis says, is where heaven is a place where subject and object come together: thought and form become one when subject experiences object.[3]

The following is a guest post by Shaun M. Smith. Shaun is a Masters level student of philosophy and a Graduate Assistant serving as an online philosophy instructor for Liberty University. I do not agree with Shaun’s position and this is not an endorsement of his views.

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There is no doubt to me, or perhaps to any Protestant Christian, the term “purgatory” is followed with such nail biting disgust. Seemingly so, almost every Protestant dismisses the doctrine without even coming close to understanding the essential nature and properties of the doctrine of purgatory. Due to the Catholic Church’s overly corrupted use of such a doctrine, most in western theology have grown bitter towards the doctrine of purgatory, as Martin Luther once did (perhaps, rightly so!).

“All those who have most closely studied the subject, and whose judgment is worth much more than mine, believe that communal marriage was the original and universal form throughout the world, including the intermarriage of brothers and sisters.” Charles Darwin, The Descent of Man, Book II, pp. 358-358

The Kinsey Revolution (Alfred Kinsey)

Grew up in South Orange, NJ

Classmates predicted as “second Darwin”

Earned doctorate from Harvard, majoring in animal and plant taxonomy

Early work on gall wasps, but switched focus to human sexuality in 1930’s

By 1940’s received funding from the National Academy of Sciences and Rockefeller Foundation for study of human sexuality

Sexual Behavior in the Human Male released in 1948.

Reduced sexuality in the “human animal” to the product of normal mammalian biology

Claimed his research was neutral and value-free, but his comments undercut this claim

Pleasures are to last forever in some form or another. According to Lewis, a pleasure is full grown only when it is remembered.[1]This full knowledge and complete fruition of pleasure will only be in the fulfillment of one’s telos. This lapse in knowledge, the separation between the subject and object (the epistemic gap between the subject and the object of desire that full one’s pleasures) is removed in heaven. In Narnia, TheLast Battle is the battle of the real forms—a draw to a close between this epistemic gap. Digory, looking at the new Narnia, seeing that it is a fuller, more real version of the old Narnia, comments that, “It’s all in Plato, all in Plato.”[2] Lewis’ Platonism is one in which ideas becomes concrete forms. In heaven, Lewis says, is where heaven is a place where subject and object come together: thought and form become one when subject experiences object.[3] Thus, the object one predicates pleasure to is in full knowledge and the ignorance–the lapse–is removed.

Lewis’ argument from desire posits a certain degree of ignorance as to how the object of desire fulfills that Sehnsucht (literally meaning mind-search, a deep and mysterious longing for something, usually lasting).

Every natural, innate desire corresponds to some real object that can satisfy that desire.

But there exists a desire space, time, or anything can satisfy. This desire is not the difference of degree of natural desire but a different kind.

Therefore, There must exist something more than these natural [natural], which can satisfy this desire.

He ascribes certain subjective pleasures to an object, which rests at an epistemic distance. There is a concrete/abstract dilemma, which keeps us from knowing a thing completely. We can know about it; we can experience it. Both cannot be done simultaneously and each has its limits when isolated. This epistemic problem, or the lapse in knowledge in illicit pleasure, is due to a separation of the subject from the object[1]. Lewis roots the epistemic dilemmas, the loss of concrete thought, in a long process of separation that begins in the fall.

Then there is, which absolutely recommend, Screwtape. This was a project overseen by Douglas Gresham, Lewis’ step-son, whom I have had the privilege of meeting. This version of the letters is more Rock and Roll, heavy, and real. Please watch the first video posted on their site (you’ll also see Gresham in his Tazmanian naval sweater, which I envy).

I just finished a paper on Lewis’ eudaimonistic ethic and worked quite a bit in Screwtape. Enjoy.